RICHARD MILLE’S LAT­EST time­piece – the RM 25- 01 Tour­bil­lon Ad­ven­ture – cre­ated quite a buzz on so­cial me­dia when ac­tor Sylvester Stal­lone posted an In­sta­gram shot of it on his wrist in early Au­gust this year. Even though the pic­ture was blurry, the post gar­nered hun­dreds of thou­sands of likes, which goes to show that there are a lot of Richard Mille and Stal­lone fans out there.

Watch en­thu­si­asts like the fact that Richard Mille makes pricey, crazy, over-the-top things that blend fine watch­mak­ing with cutting-edge de­sign and ma­te­ri­als – and the RM 25- 01 is no ex­cep­tion. Stal­lone, on the other hand, is a hero to many be­cause of his iconic roles as the diehard boxer Rocky Bal­boa in the Rocky se­ries, and as John Rambo in the Rambo se­ries, which started with the 1982 movie First Blood.

The RM 25- 01 is the re­sult of Mille’s and Stal­lone’s long­stand­ing friend­ship, a chrono­graph that pays ho­mage to Stal­lone’s on-cam­era bravado and his pas­sion for fine watches. As such, this time­piece has some im­pres­sive sig­na­ture fea­tures, with all the bells and whis­tles at­tached that help it live up to its “ad­ven­ture” name.

The RM 25- 01, in typ­i­cal Richard Mille style, is a colour­ful mon­tage of in­stru­mentin­spired in­di­ca­tors and mark­ers. (Sub­tlety is never a by­word for Richard Mille watches.)

Stal­lone calls it “a beast” and the ul­ti­mate “ex­plorer’s” watch. In­deed, this is a bold watch in­tended for the brave – with very deep pock­ets.

The RM 25- 01 is a gar­gan­tuan wrist­watch with a round case mea­sur­ing 50.85mm in di­am­e­ter, and is built out of light­weight and in­de­struc­tible ti­ta­nium and car­bon

TPT. Wa­ter-re­sis­tant up to 100 me­tres, the Da­m­a­scene fin­ish of the case also pro­vides for a rugged look.

In keeping with tra­di­tion, Richard

Mille has fit­ted this model with a highly skele­tonised man­u­ally wound tour­bil­lon move­ment and a “com­pe­ti­tion chrono­graph”, sup­ported by base­plate and bridges ma­chined out of Grade 5 ti­ta­nium. This not only makes the watch lighter but also in­creases the pre­ci­sion and long-term re­li­a­bil­ity of its chrono­met­ric func­tions while re­duc­ing en­ergy con­sump­tion by 50 per cent.

The 70-hour power-re­serve, vis­i­ble when us­ing the cou­pling and func­tion in­di­ca­tors, drives an un­usual 24-hour dis­play that’s es­sen­tial for dis­tin­guish­ing day and night, should the viewer be de­prived of sun­light.

The RM 25- 01 is fur­ther equipped with a main­spring torque in­di­ca­tor and a wind­ingcrown po­si­tion in­di­ca­tor. None of this is new for the brand, which is known for pack­ing highly com­pli­cated com­po­nents into its watches. The dial de­sign, how­ever, looks fresh.

The “sur­vival­ist” as­pect of the watch is prob­a­bly the most in­ter­est­ing fea­ture. The RM 25- 01 comes with two in­ter­change­able bezels which can be swapped. The first and most con­ven­tional is a bidi­rec­tional day­time bezel made of car­bon TPT and ti­ta­nium, with a 24-hour scale and 360- de­gree mark­ings for the car­di­nal direc­tions. No cal­cu­la­tions are re­quired to tell direc­tions when this bezel is en­gaged – all that’s needed is for the wearer to face the sun with the hour hand and turn the bezel, so the lo­cal time is in­di­cated on its 24-hour scale. The wearer can then iden­tify north, south, east and west in ei­ther hemi­sphere.

The sec­ond bezel comes in Grade 5 ti­ta­nium with a DLC coat­ing that has both a fixed and a ro­tat­ing bezel. Its bay­o­net mount makes it quick and easy to fix onto the case. It also has a flip-open hunter-style car­bon TPT cover, re­plete with com­pass nee­dle, mir­rored in­te­rior, view­ing slot and grad­u­ated marker ring, and is coated with anti-re­flec­tive and anti-mag­netic sap­phire crys­tals to help pre­vent any in­ter­fer­ence with the move­ment or the com­pass. A spirit level lo­cated at 4 o’clock means the user can check to see if the watch is com­pletely hor­i­zon­tal and, thereby, takes more ac­cu­rate read­ings. When de­tached from the RM 25- 01, the com­pass bezel can be mounted on to a plate, also made of car­bon TPT, which turns it into a map-style com­pass that pro­vides lines in­di­cat­ing the di­rec­tion to take when fol­low­ing a course on a map.

By now, if the com­pass hasn’t wowed you enough, per­haps the wa­ter pu­rifi­ca­tion cap­sules will. That’s right, the watch even fea­tures a her­met­i­cally sealed com­part­ment made of Grade 5 ti­ta­nium that holds five wa­ter pu­rifi­ca­tion tablets, each ca­pa­ble of ren­der­ing a litre of wa­ter safe to drink in any­where from half an hour to two hours, depend­ing on pol­lu­tion lev­els. It’s cer­tainly a help­ful fea­ture if you’re think­ing of ac­com­pa­ny­ing Bear Grylls into the wild. The RM 25- 01 is fin­ished with a nat­u­ral rub­ber strap with a cam­ou­flage pat­tern, in true Rambo style.

Now comes the jaw-drop­per. The RM 25-01 is priced at a whop­ping HK$7,799,000, in a lim­ited edi­tion of just 20 pieces. In­deed, one could be for­given for think­ing that the new RM 25- 01 is a slightly ab­surd watch with this price tag at­tached – and per­haps it is. But, af­ter all, this is what the Richard Mille brand is all about – a pure form of me­chan­i­cal fun for those wealthy enough to af­ford some­thing bom­bas­tic to play with, whether on the wrist or in the wild.

The Richard Mille RM25-01 Tour­bil­lon Ad­ven­ture watch, made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sylvester Stal­lone, of­fers a built-in com­pass with added fea­tures

From top: Richard Mille and Sylvester Stal­lone col­lab­o­rated to cre­ate the RM 25-01 Tour­bil­lon Ad­ven­ture watch; the RM 25-01 Tour­bil­lon Ad­ven­ture’s case is built of ti­ta­nium and car­bon TPT, and fea­tures in­ter­change­able bezels with a com­pass